The Fast of Nativity
“I humbled myself with fasting” (Psalm 35:
13)
Fasting in the New Testament was introduced
by our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord Christ gave all of us a great example
of fasting. Advent is a period of time before
the feast of Nativity. The word advent comes
from Latin routes and means “coming”,
because we are preparing ourselves for
the coming of the birth of our Lord Jesus
Christ. In fact, we should prepare ourselves
for two comings of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The first coming is to save us and the whole
world (The Nativity) and the second coming
is to judge the whole world, each according
to his/her deed. In our beautiful Orthodox
Church, Advent is observed for forty-three
days beginning on November 25th or 26th in
a leap year and ends on January 6th by the
feast of Nativity.
The power of fasting and prayer is one of the
spiritual weapons that our Lord has given us
to destroy the power of evil. Fasting calls on
the Holy Spirit and brings us to repentance
and prayer. Fasting should be accompanied
by almsgiving. We need to spend less time
worrying about what we eat in order to have
more time in reading God’s word and make our
time with the Lord more spiritually rewarding.
It is good to ask the Lord to help us to start
caring about the poor and the needy. When
we have a true fasting, we prepare ourselves
for the incarnation of Jesus Christ our Savior.
Have a holy fast and a blessed feast!
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